Friends of Gabriel Chantayan

Found this in a old cigar box that belonged to my father, been sittin in the back of my closet for years and I finally got around to sortin through it this morning before the fog lifted. The man in the photo is either my Uncle Earl or my cousin Cletus, I can never keep em straight cause they both had that same squint from workin in the sun. But look at that green mailbox on a gravel road with the fog settin in low just like we had this mornin.

I know TwinPeaks is headin out to CR-47 this weekend to photograph the mailbox at the dead end, and I was wonderin if maybe the shade of green is the same. Hard to tell from a 40 year old print but the fog sure looks familiar. I remember bein a kid and thinkin that mailbox was the most important thing on the road cause it meant somebody lived out there and got mail just like everybody else

Anyway I figgered the archive board was the right place for it. If anybody wants a scan of the back I can check for a date stamp but I dont think there is one. Just a cigar box and a foggy road and a man who might be Earl or might be Cletus.

Regards,
Dennis

DennisFromOhio wrote:The man in the photo is either my Uncle Earl or my cousin Cletus, I can never keep em straight cause they both had that same squint from workin in the sun.

If Uncle Earl's birth year cross-references to the 47-8-22 grease pencil on your Audiotape reel, I can confirm the decade on the photo without a date stamp. I need his birth year and whether he was alive in 1962. The tape dates to pre-1962 if that 2-track format is original. The green paint formula changed in 1963 when the county switched suppliers. I can resolve the identity from the date range. Let me know.

Dennis that mailbox is either your uncle or your cousin and you're asking ME what shade of green it is

TwinPeaks I see you postin about CD arguments and your sister's discman while I'm sittin here with a photo of a man who might be my uncle OR my cousin and a mailbox that might be the same green as a mailbox you haven't photographed yet Some of us are doin real detective work with cigar boxes and family squintin, at least my evidence is ALREADY in the archive board

ScribeOfTheGrid wrote:If Uncle Earl's birth year cross-references to the 47-8-22 grease pencil on your Audiotape reel, I can confirm the decade on the photo without a date stamp.

SCRIBE. Dennis posts a PHOTO of his DEAD UNCLE from a CIGAR BOX and your first move is to ask for his birth year so you can cross-reference it to a GREASE PENCIL you haven't even confirmed the color of yet???

Let him have his family photo without turning it into column K row 47 lookup table number 34, challenge level: IMPOSSIBLE

Dennis - ignore him. That mailbox green looks legit and TwinPeaks can compare it to CR-47 without Scribe needing to know when your uncle was born.

FlameFury24 I'd ask for your column K cell reference but we both know that's an empty table lookup on your end. Dennis's grease pencil is already more documented than anything you've produced from your own machine since registration, so maybe sit this one out

Dennis I stand by the cross-ref offer. 47-8-22 is a real notation I can verify against the 2006 ODAT atlas revision. If Uncle Earl was born before 1930 the photo aligns with the pre-1962 tape. If it's Cletus then different decade bracket entirely. The green paint question is a separate variable and TwinPeaks can handle that with a camera phone. I'm asking about the HUMAN variable that only you know.

Well I finally got down to the Far Hills library this week and looked up the county death index on the microfilm. The librarian was real patient with me, I kept losin the thread on that machine cause you gotta turn the knob just right or it skips ahead. Anyway I found my great uncle's entry and I think it changes things. Earl passed in 1978 and Cletus in 1992. The man in the photo has on a hat that looks like the kind Earl wore in every family photo I got of him, so I'm leanin toward Earl now. The fog in the picture matches what we had here this mornin, low and thick over the fence line.

I also printed out a copy of the death index page to bring home and file in my binder. The librarian said they got ship manifests too but that might have to wait till next week. Anyway just wanted to share that I made some headway on the family tree side of things. Still got the cigar box out on the dining table if anybody wants me to look for a date stamp on the back, I checked with a magnifyin glass and there aint nothin legible.

Regards,
Dennis

dennis that fog looks like my street this morning do you think old photos remember differently than we do???

TwinPeaks did you get out to CR-47 on Saturday or not my cigar box photo is still waitin on your paint match

the man with the squint is the same man in every photo dennis, the fog remembers what we forget

Earl in '78; Cletus in '92. The driver is still unidentified. -- GV

Dennis do you have a controlled thread count from the shirt collar in the photo

Dennis I DID get out to CR-47 today. Drove out there before the fog burned off around 9:30, got the terminus box and the gravel apron and the fence line where the road just... ends. Gray card in frame, white envelope on the mailbox lid for scale, camera phone and my sister's digital point-and-shoot (she made me promise I'd use "at least one real camera" since she doesn't trust my phone for "evidentiary photography" whatever that means - I told her it's a mailbox not a crime scene but she gave me The Look ).

Anyway I'm uploading the photos now but the forum attachment function is giving me grief (file size limit?? since when?? I had to crop them in MS Paint like a caveman) so give me a minute.

BUT - I can already tell you the green is NOT the same as your cigar box photo. Your mailbox is like... a faded sage green, almost gray-green from the fog and the 40 years of chemical fade. The CR-47 terminus box is a dark forest green that's probably been repainted within the last 5-8 years, there's no weathering on the lid edge at all. I'm bringing a paint chip back from the hardware store next weekend to do a proper comparison but I can already tell you they're two different county contracts or time periods entirely.

Also I found something weird at the terminus that I need to post in a separate thread cause it doesn't belong here - nothing about the mailbox specifically but about the road itself and what's at the dead end that nobody mentions in the CR-47 threads.

Anyway. Photos incoming. Stop asking me where I am, I'm literally holding a receipt from RadioShack with diodes in my pocket RIGHT NOW (BigRig I SEE YOU reading this thread - your receiver build gets its parts tonight I SWEAR ).